SEO For The Starving Marketer

Hiring an expert for SEO is not a possibility if you are starting your internet business on a shoestring.

Consider learning SEO yourself as an advantage

Why do I say this? Because learning SEO yourself will get you grounded in your business. You need to know your internet business inside and out if you want it to be a moneymaking business.

The other reason is to prepare you for the future when your internet business takes off, expands and you have the funds to outsource some of your tasks as well as the need to do so. Once your business expands you'll need to outsource some things so you can free up your time for the creative and income producing elements.

Your business needs to be managed and overseen by you. If you have grounded yourself, learned SEO and how it works, you will be better able to choose and oversee a service or indiviaual who handles SEO for your business.

You will need to inter-act with your SEO service so you know what measures they are taking in behalf of your business. There are techniques that can bring short and lucrative rewards to an online business, but that can come back to haunt you later on. You will need to understand what the SEO expert is doing, and why, and be able to evaluate the long term effects for yourself.

SEO is not an exact science

Knowing about SEO is a matter of testing and observation, as opposed to just having specific rules and facts for a basis.

The search engines only impart a small amount of information about their inner workings. They do publish some guidelines, but much is unknown, and the search engines like to keep it that way. They also change things periodically just to make it more interesting, and confusing.

In my wildest moments of thought I often wonder if the people working at the search engines aren't in much the same situation as the people who worked on the atom bomb. I see them in their own seperate work cubicles, and each only allowed to work on so much of the puzzle, and sworn to an oath of strict secrecy. Not totally far-fetched.

SEO is about observation and testing

We all, as babies, learned to walk by observing what worked and trying it ourselves. We tested. Sometimes we fell on our behinds. We observed some more and tested again until we got it right.

Do know the hard and fast rules of the search engines, so you don't get in trouble. Then observe and test. Which SEO methods are working for others? What are successful sites doing in terms of SEO? Read some ebooks on SEO. Visit some of the forums that specialize in SEO. Evaluate what you read and hear.

Not everyone at a forum is an expert in SEO or anything else, but when you hear the same thing over and over, there may be something to it.

Do learn SEO for yourself. Go to the search engines and see what they have to say. By all means read what they do not allow. Visit some forums, do some reading, and tweak and test until you find the SEO techniques that work well for your internet business.

About the Author

Illa designed her website as a guide for beginning marketers. Find information on Search Engine Placement and for those just getting started a Home Based Business Checklist .